Recently, I received an email from a frequent poster on one of the Muslim listervs I quietly follow. It appeared to be a short article, perhaps one he had posted elsewhere, but he had sent it to me annotated with the subtitle, ‘My advice to Muslims.’  The advice was more or less summed up in the principle title: It Is Not Enough To Be Good; One Must Also Show The Right Path To Others Who Might Otherwise Do Evil.

It began with a series of arguments which then led to the following observation:

The world is facing disaster upon disaster every day and people are expecting a major catastrophe. The deeds that have been forbidden by God are being committed openly. The evils are increasing, while the virtues are fading out gradually. Tyranny, oppression and carnage are going on, liars and cheats are overcoming. Terrorism, bribery, corruption, evil, nudity, vulgarity and wickedness have assaulted the world. It seems we have reached inferno before the Last Day. History tells us that such a situation arises when people are being cursed by God.

The conclusion was thus:

I advise the virtuous people of the world that they should not only depend upon their prayers to save themselves from the Divine Punishment; rather they should lead the Evil Doers and followers of Satan who have gone astray, to the right path. They should undertake this task against Evil Doers with full determination. Only then will their virtues and prayers save them from the Divine Punishment.

There are so many problems with this kind of lazy thinking that it is difficult to know where to start. Above all, there is an assumption that the world is in a state of moral chaos. Think about that for a moment. Think about the technological and economic developments of the last 50 years – love ‘em or hate ‘em. Think of the political developments in Western Europe and elsewhere – yes, a task incomplete and perhaps flawed in many ways, but today’s globalized societies -for all their profound failings – are partly the product of kind of hard work and clear thinking that would simply not be possible were humanity drowning in some dark oceon of decadance.

The idea of ‘evil’ is just too vague to explain the multitude of divserse political, social and environmental problems facing the world today. Nor does it offer any concrete solutions. The implication is that such problems are largely or even solely the consequence of individual sin. This completely ignores a whole raft of structural and cultural explanations, many of which posit positive and achievable responses.

People who run around proferring this kind of ‘advice’ are actually contributing to humanity’s problems because, instead of encouraging Muslims to engage with their social responsibilties through learning and civic action, they proclaim that convincing others to embrace Islam, or at the very least conform to Muslim values, is the primary ethical moral imperative of the pious Muslim. This is both sanctimonious and disempowering. Doing good means – at least in part – doing something to make this world a better place for other people, a moral stance undermined by the kind of blinkered dystopianism that imagines humankind slipping into ever darker times.

Yet, having said that, Islam is the answer – but one answer. We can look to the Prophet (aws) as someone who transformed the society in which he lived as an example to us, and the Qur’an and our scholarly traditions as a guide to how we should live in this world and prepare for the next. But this is not the only way.

If there is a piece of advice I would like to offer my brothers and sisters, it is to forego the notion that our community is the one sent to lead humanity to the light of truth. In taking this stand, we merely mirror the arrogant presumptions that underpin much colonial and imperial thinking in the global North. Rather, we should endeavour to be part of a conversation concerning the nature and direction of the human spirit. As a great Muslim philosopher once said, the light of Allah can be seen even in the eye of the atheist. Allah knows better.